On not finishing the frosting

The doctor's office called late in the day to tell me that the glucose test results had come back, and I was fine. "Merry Christmas!" said the nurse cheerfully, and I got the impression she was glad not to have to tell me to lay off the sugar for the holiday.

I must say though that going lower sugar, skipping desserts and focusing on mixed ingrediant snacks, such as a half a sandwich or bowl of chicken soup, over the last few weeks has been nice. I won't skip the dessert table on Christmas Eve, but I'll definitely be choosy about the offerings. And, I'll go for seconds on the main dishes before contemplating a second round of desserts.

So I will return the gestational diabetes book, unfinished, to the library. Unfinished. This is still a novelty to me. I was in school for so many years that finishing every book was deeply ingrained; whether I liked a book or not, I had to finish it because most likely it was an assignment. I loved reading, but every once in a great, great while I'd come across a book that really bothered me. I'd finish it, sometimes meet one-on-one with the teacher to discuss my grievances, but I ALWAYS finished what I began. However, this library book does not apply to me. So I can spend my time doing something else rather than finishing it... like write about not finishing it.

Christmas Music

Four concerts in nine days.

There was the traditional Christmas pageant, with fluttering angels, shepherds sword fighting with shepherds' crooks, a king with stage fright replaced by his older brother, and a Mary who kept tugging at her veil in a vain attempt to keep it from popping off her head.

There was the preschool concert where three-quarters of the parents left their seats to crouch on the floor in an attempt to get somewhat close enough to use their cell phone cameras.

There was the violin recital where I had the completely self-assured youngest soloist (age 4) as well as the silently weeping older sister (age 6) who suddenly realized that she could have played at the recital if she had continued her cello lessons this fall.

Finally, there was the lower grade school Christmas pageant featuring different sorts of angels -- divas, hippies, yuppies, stars, hollies, and cowboys -- all sent to nowhere town Bethlehem and learn about the importance of Christmas.

I got an email from another parent this morning, asking to borrow my video tape because his video camera seized up during the first act, just before his son's speaking line.

Merry Christmas! And this was with just two Monkeys. Next year we'll have a nine-month-old to pull over the Christmas tree in the mix.

Jabs

This evening I was trying to describe this baby's movements to my husband. We can see my belly changing shape, but the smooth subterranean rolls look nothing like what I feel, which seems all jabbing elbows. Or jabbing elbows, knees, feet, and hands pummeling me from the inside.

Monkey1, listening and observing, summed up the baby's perspective this way: "Move over fat lady, I need room!"

My husband and I started laughing.

Monkey2, eager to be included, parroted her sister's comment, making me laugh again.

But also admonish her, "You can say that as much as you like at home, but NOT outside the house."

Three more months of this!

Angels We Have Heard on High

What happens when a dozen four to six-year-old girls are dressed up like angels? What happens when a half dozen little boys are given shepherd's crooks?

Lots of flapping and twirling. Sword fights in the vestibule. Meanwhile some mothers are safety-pinning yards and yards of material around and around several children in an effort to transform them into kings, innkeepers, or more shepherds. All this joyous insanity and excitement for about ten minutes of cuteness and photo-ops. I mean, all this for the Nativity reenactment, a small part of the church choir's "Cookies and Carols" Christmas concert.

Yes there really were cookies afterwards in the parish hall.

The Glucose Challenge

"I'm liking this," observed my husband, slicing up a pear. "I don't have to eat breakfast all at once."

I had just returned from dropping the Monkeys off at school, stopping at the Y to cancel our membership (should have done that months ago), and grocery shopping for bread, which had of course turned into bread-tortillas-popcorn-toothbrushes-mouthwash-blistex-pickles&marshmallows grocery shopping. All of which we needed, just bread had been uppermost on my mind when we left the house this morning because we had used up every slice, including the heels languishing in the fridge for the last three weeks because no one wants to eat the heels. Then tortillas were added because I was sitting in the gathering space at the back of church, waiting for the preschool to open, and the daily Mass started with the priest remarking it is the Feast of Saint Juan Diego, which means Our Lady of Guadalupe. Since I was already planning to cook up some beef for supper, I figured we might as well attempt a Mexican theme, hence the tortillas.

Breakfast in stages? My husband was two hours into his first day teleworking, he'd decided to try it once a week for the next few months, and I looked at him in horror. Um, pounds?

However, he was eating a pear.

I'll admit I'm a bit sensitive right now. Yesterday at a doctor's appointment, the OB gave me a bit of a stern warning about gestational diabetes. Apparently my age, problems with yeast, and the fact that I've already had two well over nine pound babies puts this doctor on alert. (While pre-pregnancy weight is often cited as an issue, this is not the case for me.) The doctor grumbled that the glucose test was being given later than it should be -- next week -- "Talk to your colleagues," I shrugged. With a half-dozen OB's at this practice, there is some diversity of opinion.

However, what she said was enough to cause me to stop at the library on the way home and get a book on gestational diabetes. I might as well preemptively start educating myself. If the glucose test goes badly for my system, and then the three-hour test, I will have to take a nutrition class and probably have more than the usual number of doctor's appointments to monitor this pregnancy. I might as well start with some knowledge in my pocket. Then, if the one-hour test goes fine, so what? I've learned something new. Gotta keep those brain cells from totally rotting.

From the library I checked out a slim volume called "Gestational Diabetes: What to Expect" by the American Diabetes Association. I've read almost half of it, and already I am understanding some aspects of my previous pregnancies in a new light.

Monkey1 was 9 1/2 pounds, and Monkey2 was 9 3/4 pounds at birth. Big, fat babies.

Some time ago, one of my friends tried to explain to me that large weight babies were indicative of near-diabetes in the pregnant mom, and I could not understand what she was talking about. Some babies are just big! Now I have a better idea what she was trying to say. Let's work backwards, from the mother who has gestational diabetes (since that is the book I have):

"Macrosomia literally means 'large body' and refers to a baby who is larger than normal for its developmental age. Women with gestational diabetes whose blood glucose levels are higher than normal are more likely to have macrosomic babies. This occurs because the babies receive nourishment by absorbing glucose and other nutrients from the Mother's blood through the placenta. If your blood glucose levels are high, your nutrient levels will be much higher than normal, and the baby will receive more glucose than he or she needs.

When 'fed' the extra glucose, a baby tends to get fat. Because the baby does not have diabetes, it's pancreas will produce extra insulin to use all the blood glucose. The extra insulin the baby is forced to produce makes it grow bigger and fatter."

Bigger babies mean more trouble getting them out. Even before reading his book, I've wondered if Monkey2 got stuck heading the wrong way because of her size, and being breach, she was delivered by scheduled C-section.

Diagnosing gestational diabetes is done with a glucose test, or challenge, measuring one's blood sugar level, drinking something sugary, and then taking another measure of one's blood sugar. The level, a number, indicates normal processing or inability to process the glucose. What if someone passes the test, but marginally? This is the area of potential trouble; "you're fine" covers over, "with a few changes to your diet/exercise habits, things can go even better for you and the baby."

See, when Monkey2 was born, the hospital staff looked at her 9 3/4 pounds of glory and whisked her off for having low blood sugar. Because of her size, there was an assumption of her being fat on my extra insulin, which of course would drop once she was no longer connected to me. However, I have seen the hospital records, and there are no numbers to support what we were told at the time. I did not have gestational diabetes, according to the numbers, yet looking at my baby, this was the assumption. Obviously the science of this needs some work.

Learning about diabetes is interesting. So is nutrition. A daunting subject for me, because I'd much rather read Harry Potter with my kids than spend time on a grocery list, in my fridge and cupboards and stove, getting a balanced plate together. Something's on the plate, and it is not McDonald's, so we're good, right? Time to tweak into the "better" category, I think.

Sugar drink, one hour glucose test, in a week. I hope it's not that horrible orange flavor again.

Sounds of the Season

The raucous battery-powered singing of a pair of bobbing carolers, a snowman and a little boy, is the herald of Christmas in our house. It has been since long before the Monkeys.

On the occasion of the first or second Christmas of my now thirteen-year-old nephew, my sister's mother-in-law bought the singing duo from an Avon representative as something to entertain the baby. My sister promptly classified it as a great babysitting toy to live at Auntie's house. It does entertain babies, and my parakeets loved it too. The snowman and boy are soft, their heads bob up and down most charmingly, especially when held in a half-nelson under each arm of a toddler, and they sing, alternating lines of their little song. When I moved out of state, the carolers went with me.

When I had babies, they were a big hit. A favorite Christmas home movie is one St. Nicholas Day morning when Monkey2 was almost nine months old. As I read a book to Monkey1 and repeatedly pull things out of Monkey2's mouth, the final straw is when I take away a little box of maple candy. She starts to howl, I squeeze the trigger of the carolers, they start shouting/singing and bobbing their heads, which immediately silences Monkey2 for about three seconds, after which she is laughing and clapping. The Monkeys find all the baby home movies entertaining, but this one tops the list. It also means that the existence of the carolers is burned into their memory.

As soon as Advent started this year, Monkey2 started asking where the snowman and the little boy were.

"When we get the Christmas tree, and decorate it, they come out," I told her.

Imagine my bafflement when I opened the box of Christmas decorations and the carolers were not there! There was only one place I could imagine them -- on my husband's tool table. Since this is a catch-all pile of tools, toys to be fixed, potentially useful bits and pieces, and assorted items that do not have a home anywhere in particular, I appealed to my husband. He dug the carolers out in minutes, and then we both remembered that one had stopped working during last Christmas.

No matter, at least they were found.

The boy sang and bobbed his head valiantly, while his snowman friend remained silent and motionless, and then he quit too.

It's not the batteries.

My husband examined the wires, triggers and connections. While his degree is not in engineering, most of his college buddies were on that track, and I believe I've heard a story or two about the lot of them re-wiring the dorm elevator to take you to all the wrong floors. (And I don't think this was done during a power outage, but done with everything still live/hot.) So my husband fixed the snowman and diagnosed the little boy, who has an intermittent problem that can be fixed with a part from Radio Shack.

This afternoon Monkey2 is wandering around, contentedly making the raucous carolers sing, and talking to them. I can almost remember the particular note of squawking joy my parakeets would add to this sound of the season.

The Advent House Tradition

The diaper box is back. I mean, the Advent House is out. My husband cringes at the mention and then sight of this Advent tradition. The Monkeys of course love it.

Back in my days of buying large boxes of disposable diapers, one year at the beginning of December I covered one such box with "wood grain" contact paper, cut twenty-four windows and doors in its sides, fitted some cardboard dividers inside, re-wrote the Christmas story onto twenty-four index cards, and invested in a child-play-friendly nativity set. Each morning the Monkeys open another door or window of the Advent House (the covered diaper box), pulling out another few sentences of the Christmas story and another character of the nativity set. By Christmas Eve, the story is complete and all the crèche pieces are out.

I know my Monkeys, so I do not fill the box's rooms with the whole story and all the pieces at the beginning of Advent. Each night after they've gone to bed I put the next day's pieces inside. (Or I wake up at 3 a.m. and realize I have not done it yet, so must creep downstairs and do it.) I also have the story arranged so that in the first several days, two characters of the nativity set come out at a time, making play a bit easier, and somewhat diminishing fights. After a few days, just one character comes out at a time, because after all, the crèche set only has so many people and animals. I really had to hunt for a set that had more than eight or twelve pieces!

Mary and Joseph, the inn keeper and his wife, are out, and the Monkeys arrange and rearrange the scenery pieces -- palm trees, the stable, the inn, a well, the kings' tents.

"When does the Angel come?" asked Monkey1.

"Around the time the shepards show up," I answer.

"That's Jack and Benny," pipes up Monkey2, referring to the shepards named after the two brothers in Matthew Loux's "Salt Water Taffy" series, a favorite one year. I wonder if any pieces will be named or renamed reflecting this year's fascination with Harry Potter.

This year I did wonder how much longer this child-play-friendly set would last, hold the interest, of my Monkeys. I am anxiously awaiting the year when I can set up the crèche set my mother made while pregnant with me, where every piece was hand modeled before being baked in a kiln. A very fragile set that needs to be up on a high and stable surface.

Unsolicited, Monkey1 offered her opinion of our current nativity pieces. "Mommy, it's a good thing we have the Little Peoples Bethlehem set... the baby can't eat them."

Or rather, if he/she tries to eat them, the pieces are too large to be swallowed and can be washed off afterwards.

Yes, next Christmas, and the next and the next and the next... we'll still be needing this child-friendly-play crèche set. What a relief. Traditions are the familiar.

Losing Words

I think I was just called a bigot. Some remarks I made were questioned as "veiled bigotry".

Um, well, if disagreeing with another person can be called bigotry, throw it at me!

Just to make sure, I looked up "bigotry" in the dictionary, which defined the word as "stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed belief or opinion that differs from one's own." Stubborn, perhaps I am, but completely intolerant? Since when is disagreeing, asking "But-what-about...", how is that bigotry? I think my First Amendment right to freedom of speech is being infringed upon!

It was another lifetime ago for me, before kids, before marriage, that I worked for the Catholic Diocese of Burlington when gay marriage/civil unions electrified Vermont. That was in 2000. Answering the phone during that legislative session was horrible. It seemed that every person who disagreed with the Bishop's stand that marriage remain defined as "one man and one woman" had to call and vent. Little wonder that a year later I was job hunting out of state and focusing on television production rather than public relations!

I remember my grandparents asking me what was going on in the legislature, why was this being debated? My grandfather had served in the House of Representatives from the mid-1960's to late 1980's, different but changing times. I had explained to my grandparents that marriage was being called a "civil right" and that the civil rights struggle of the '60's was still in recent enough memory that saying "civil rights" was like granting a free pass, putting everyone on notice to get their hands off, because no one wants to infringe on civil rights. At the same time, I voiced my perplexity with this popular reasoning. Weren't civil rights about being a citizen? Voting?

Nine years later, the Vermont legislature upgraded civil unions to same sex marriage, though I'm not sure I knew about it when it happened. I was five hundred miles away and dealing with a two-year-old and four-year-old. Reading the news was never high on my priority list. If I was aware of anything politically, it was the settling in of our new president, the first black man to lead our country, less than a dozen miles from my home. I hoped he would do well as president, but knew he had been handed a bad platter of problems.

To this other issue.

Like a patch work quilt, all the states in the union are being called to declare themselves on marriage and to define it for this age. I wonder how it will equip or confuse the current and coming generations about relationships and dealing with not just with differences in opinion but differences in perspective that are wired into gender. Pandora's box is open. Now how do we deal with it? Can we really be so naive to think it is all and only about love? Terrible things can happen under the guise of love.

And can I go live under my rock again?

Not likely now that I have children venturing out into the uneven seas of school.

Good-bye & Hello

11-22-11.

Good-bye at 113,576 miles:

Hello at 4 miles:

Angelic Monkeys

The Monkeys are old enough to participate in our parish Nativity reenactment. 

At the informational meeting, the children "drew straws" for parts. The Religious Education director has been doing this awhile, so the straws are actually lollipops, which helps sweeten the blow of not getting a speaking part, of which there are about a dozen. Monkey1 drew an Angel part, the one who tells Joseph not to be afraid and to take Mary as his wife. Monkey2 will be in the choir of angels around the stable, along with several of her friends.

The first practice was yesterday, and while Monkey1 was shy walking in, holding my hand and almost walking behind me, once she had her assigned spot, she was interested, attentive, and bold in repeating her two or three sentences into the microphone. Monkey2 stuck with all the other little angels, giggling at the wanderings in and out of a two-year-old she knows well, friends' younger sibling who will be at home in bed the night of the Christmas program.

After three run-throughs, the box of costumes came out. All the angels received plastic headbands with antennas holding up silver garland halos. My Monkeys loved them!

As we left the church, the garden club was convening. One elderly lady who daily marvels over my efforts with Monkey2's long blonde tresses, as I wait for the preschool to open, suddenly discovered I had TWO blonde girls. In halos, no less. "Oh you have two angels!" she said. 

I just couldn't let that pass. "No, two girls," I replied cheerfully. 

Growing Monkeys. As I write this, Monkey2 is jumping off chairs onto a blue blanket, shouting that she is swimming, while Monkey1 is drawing a picture for a book report for school. And Monkey3 is visibly kicking through my belly.

Lights

Of course the Golf has to get in a parting shot. 

Saturday evening the headlights turned on and then went out. Poof! Both together. Had to use the high beams. 

My husband went through the fuse panel very carefully the next day, but there was no blown fuse. Removing the headlight lenses, he discovered that the bulbs had blown. Simultaneously. Really? What are the chances of that?

The Little Way of Motherhood

The arrival of my high school and college alumni magazines seems to be an exercise in, or test of, the virtue Contentment. Confronted with a forum made for crowing one's achievements and material climb of the worldly ladder, the stay-at-home mom is left to ponder: What have I done?

I changed my month-old baby 225 times in fifteen days. (Yes I really kept track of such things with my first born.)
Or
I kept hundreds of diapers out of a landfill by using cloth diapers with my second toddler.
Or
I spot mopped the floor three times in one day due to various messy leavings on the floor.
Or
I got in and out of Target in twenty minutes accompanied by a four-year-old who would not sit in the cart.

B.C., Before Children, I had a job that earned me a half dozen framed awards and a statuette trophy, and I rose in the ranks of a martial art.
Now, A.D., After Diapers, I have walls with marker doodles  and two walking, talking, growing statues that are liable to be tired, hungry, hide behind me, jump on me, wake me up in the middle of the night, or amp up the Cuteness and Charm factor for really important things like the roving ice cream truck or getting out of violin practice. 

In the alumni magazines I read:
Someone has published a book.
So-and-so is regional manager of a bank.
Somebody went to Paris for their third wedding anniversary.
Someone else raised funds and built an orphanage, dug a well, wiped out a local pestilence, and will earn their second Ph.D. next month. 

Meanwhile, I am listening to "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" for the hundredth-something time in three months with my four and six-year old Monkeys and getting kicked from the inside of my basketball belly by the third Monkey. 

And the alumni magazine is in the recycle bin.

Another Round of Drives

Beep! Beep! Beep!

The alarm on our little Tardis was going off again in the middle of the night. Next morning I learned, via Facebook, that this time it had disturbed my husband enough to complain about it publicly.

Last week we ordered and received the baby carseat, so we were ready to do a serious evaluation of vehicle space and try out the seating configurations of our top two choices, Monkeys in tow.

The dealerships were so different from each other! At one, which I had called ahead to make sure they had a model with the backup camera feature available for test drives, the salesman put on the plates, gave us the key, and said, "Go enjoy your drive." Whereas the other place, the salesman accompanied us on the drive and talked about the vehicle and its features the whole time. I had made clear to both salesmen that I had driven their vehicle before, and displayed familiarity with the available features. This time out was about letting my husband drive and seeing how our family -- and all our car seats -- fit. One salesman could let the vehicle do the talking. One could not.

In Vehicle One, Monkey1 enjoyed the ability to roll her window up and down (in the VW we use the child safety feature that disables the window controls for the backseat), as well as the built-in booster seat.
In Vehicle Two, Monkey2 loved the built in sunshades.
Getting out of Vehicle One, Monkey2 nearly fell because it sits so much higher off the ground.
Exiting Vehicle Two, Monkey1 complained of being car sick.

Both vehicles fit three across in the bench row immediately behind the driver. In Vehicle One this meant one of our enormous backed booster seats, the vehicle's built in booster, and the new baby seat, which starts rear facing and then gets turned around.  And by playing with the seat position adjustments, we confirmed that an adult can still fit in the empty seats in the way back. Though truthfully, we'd probably move the Monkeys back there because they are more agile at climbing.  Vehicle Two displayed the same capacity, our three big car seats fit easily across the middle, and I settled in the back row. And felt every bump in the road.
Vehicle One is bigger than our Golf, and Vehicle Two is simply palatial. The larger space actually made my husband and I uneasy. We need more leg room for everyone, but we don't want our kids to be on the far reaches of the galaxy. Does that make sense? Is there such a thing as too much space inside an area bounded by four wheels? Doubtless any of my friends with three or four kids would say I am insane, but both my husband and I had the same concern on this issue. (Obviously we are well paired if we both ask, "But is it too big?")

And then there was simply how the vehicles felt as we drove them. Somewhere along my road of twenty-two years behind the wheel I became a tiny bit of a car connoisseur. I've driven quite a variety of vehicles: Ford Aerostar, Toyota Corolla, Honda Accord, Mitsubishi Mirage, VW Passat, VW Jetta, Toyota Matrix, VW Golf, Chevy Malibu, Nissan Altima, Cadillac Escalade, Chevy Suburban, ... some for only five minutes, I'll admit. Some were hard to drive, some easy, some I hated, some I loved. A car is a tool, an oversized gadget, and hopefully one that will last a decade or so.

Time to make our checklist of required features and submit it to the salesman. 

And hope our quirky little Golf will find a loving home.

Another car story

Monkey2 dropped something on the floor of the car on our way to school, so when we arrived, I got out, yanked my seat forward, and Monkey2 crawled around on the gravel and crumb encrusted floor mat. She found the minute item, and we all went in to school. 

Returning to my car, I squeezed myself into the driver seat, managed to grab the under-seat lever for adjusting its distance to the steering wheel, and ... the seat slid smoothly all the way back. ALL the way back, to the end of its track, so the driver's seat was nearly touching the back seat. Puzzled, I slid the seat forward, and then back, ALL the way back again. Usually there are catch spots, or click spots, where the seat stops, so the driver's seat can be adjusted to different distances from the steering wheel and pedals, according to the height and comfort of the driver. What happened? All the catch points were gone! 

While my long leggedness meant I could still reach the gas and brake pedals, it meant the passenger directly behind me, Monkey2 in her car seat this case, would have zero leg room! (And no, moving the car seat over to the middle spot is not an option in the Golf -- not with Monkey1's car seat also in the back seat.)

I called my husband.
"Maybe something is stuck on the track," he suggested.
"I can't get down there and look! It'll take me a half hour to get up again!"
He laughed, "No, don't you do it; you're like a turtle."

Hopefully he meant like a turtle flipped over on its back having difficulty getting righted. My basketball belly certainly makes navigating certain positions more challenging. 

Of course, by the end of the day, when he sat in the car and slid the seat forward and backward, it acted completely normally, and he was able to get the seat back in the right spot.

Really, little Golf? You're already playing tricks on me with the alarm that goes off for no reason at 2 a.m. 
And the self-locking doors once I'm turning the ignition, causing the alarm to go off. 
And the rattle in the rear hatch that ominously reminds me of two summers ago when the latch broke and the rear hatch door had to be disassembled from inside the car in order to be fixed.
Please, just hold out a little longer!

All Saints

November first, the Feast of All Saints.

All our saints in heaven, pray for us!

On my honor, I will try...

(Another post on the Girl Scouts.)

Again, an announcement in the church bulletin. The diocese was seeking nominations for scout leader awards -- Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and American Heritage Girls.

How about that? All of them lumped together in one sentence and going to be honored together at one diocesan function. The last group, the American Heritage Girls, was formed in direct reaction to Girl Scouts' losing their moral compass. 

I was glad I had an appointment with one of our parish priests to discuss the issue. As far as I could discern from my research and conversations with local leaders, especially of the younger girls, it came down to me choosing to believe that the Girl Scouts are basically a good organization with some misguided individuals, or a bad organization worthy of my boycott.

The priest listened to my summary of the situation, about Girl Scout logos appearing on some  Planned Parenthood brochures, of some GS councils co-sponsoring events with PP, of the local (parish/school) leaders' responses to questions. "If my daughter was a teenager, this might be more of an issue," I remarked "Everything goes haywire then, but now..."

"You want my opinion?" the priest asked, leaning his cheek in his hand, morning sun glinting off the edges of his rimless glasses. "Misplaced zeal" were the words he used. He recalled during his years at the seminary that some fellows passed around a list of stores and restaurants not to give business to because this one supported gay marriage, this one covered contraceptives to its employees, that one abortion... "I would have to be Amish to avoid all these places!" he told me.

Like anything else I do as a parent, I have to keep my eyes open. I can't spend my entire time protecting my girls from every possible danger; we need to pursue the good, positive elements of living too. Scouting and time with friends in service-oriented activities and fun learning adventures is a good thing.

Tonight we will attend a parent and Daisy Scout (and sibling) meeting. And if tomorrow one of my Girl Scout avoiding friends calls up and says, "Hey, we're starting that Little Flower group, are you in?" I'll reconsider. (The Little Flower group is another alternative scouting type group, named after Terese, the Little Flower.)

As I say to anyone that raises the "socializing" problem of homeschooling, it just means that Mom is more involved in choosing with whom my children spend time.  Yes that's a lot of work. Welcome to parenthood!  Even though we are not homeschooling now, this is the biggest lesson I learned from all the homeschool parents, Catholic and non-Catholic, that I hung around with and whose children played with my children, from the time Monkey1 was two until she started Catholic school part-way through her kindergarten year. It is a lesson that matters in school and out of school.

In the meantime, I think I'll be teaching my little Scout how to sew patches on her uniform. Oh wait, aren't they iron-on patches these days?

Running Time

Today was another memory day. 

Today in Washington some 22,000 people ran in the Marine Corps Marathon; six years ago today I remember stopping at a highway rest area and seeing a sea of purple race participant shirts. We had left Long Island, the moving truck the day before, our two Golfs packed with the odds and ends that would fit around a six-month-old baby and a bird cage with two parakeets. We were unemployed, and 99% of our stuff was going into a storage unit; a few things - our bed, the crib, some clothes, the video camera - were going to my in-laws' house, where we were going to live until... until whatever came next. 

We, my husband and I, were glad to leave Long Island. Within a month or two of moving there in 2001 we had each concluded it was not the right place for us. Our jobs were there, so we stuck it out. September 11th and the Towers came down. The east coast electrical grid failure. Things just happen in New York. So when Monkey1 was born, the house we were renting was put up for sale, and notification that the grant paying my husband's salary would not be renewed - all in a month - we knew our Long Island exile was coming to an end. 

So the Marine Corps Marathon is always a reminder of our our exodus, a marker of how long ago and how recent are the chapters of our lives. 

Semper Fidelis!

Twenty weeks

Yesterday we got our first look at Monkey3 with the twenty-week ultrasound. 

"If I can see," the technician asked, "do you want to know the sex?" 
"I don't," I answered, "my husband does."
She looked from one to the other of us uncertainly.
"We've done it before, it works just fine," I reassured her.

The ghostly black and white images filled the small monitor screen, difficult for me to understand at first, but as I grew used to it, I was able to pick out features of the face, the little hands and feet with all the glowing fingers and toes, the pumping heart... 

At one point the technician turned the monitor away, "Come on, open your legs," she cajoled the baby. 
I'm not sure she got a good look. She did say "Aha!" once, but that might have been for something else. Our baby was basically chilling out and taking a nap, not moving much. I got up and bounced up wand down the hallway a bit to try to get the baby to shift position because we were getting no clear views of the spine, but this was unsuccessful. I need to come back another day, if my OB thinks it is important enough.

Twenty weeks. We're half-way through.

More about Wheels

Over the weekend we took in another round of car shopping. I'm enjoying our targeted  and focused installments of this endeavor. While one sales floor was plainly disconcerted by our timeline (buy by March), the information gathering and discussions as we go along about what we need (room for at least three car seats and enough leg room for everyone), what we want (a back-up camera), and what we hope (to chose a vehicle that will last us another 10 years) have been so constructive.

Of course, talking in code to my husband while in front of the salesman has been entertaining too.
"How did you like the drive?" the dealer asked as I settled a vehicle back into park.
"It drives like a [name of brand]!" I said cheerfully.
My husband laughed, clearly understanding my message to him: "It's got that squishy steering that you hate."
"My first car was one!" I retorted.
The dealer however was clearly satisfied that I liked the vehicle.

...

"That's it? We're down to two?" my husband asked at the end of the weekend. 
"Unless you have any more to add to the look-at list," I shrugged.

Next time out, we need to get the Monkeys and their monster carseats into the two vehicles, see how the interior spaces actually work for us, and give both another test drive.

Girl Scouts - In These Days

(This is the second installment in a series of posts on Girl Scouts. More to come as I gather information and reflect on it.  I work slowly these days.)

In 2004 in Texas, several communities boycotted Girl Scout cookie sales, culminating in the local council severing ties and no longer co-sponsoring an annual event as it had previously done with Planned Parenthood.

Shortly afterward the then-CEO of the Girl Scouts, Kathy Cloninger, was interviewed on NBC’s "Today" show.  She said:  "The Girl Scouts in Waco, Texas, really made a decision based on local community context, they decided that in this particular situation that it would be in the best interest of girls and their families to discontinue the relationship with Planned Parenthood." Subsequently she noted, "We partner with many organizations. We have relationships with our church communities, with YWCAs, and with Planned Parenthood organizations across the country, to bring information-based sex education programs to girls." 

Um, gulp.

Following this turmoil, a group called STOPP (Stop Planned Parenthood) conducted a survey of the then 300+ Girl Scout councils across the U.S. After several months, STOPP reported that 20% of Girl Scout councils admitted to having a relationship with Planned Parenthood. Some councils said they have no working relationships with Planned Parenthood, while the majority did not respond to the survey. 

A "relationship" with Planned Parenthood was defined as any of the following:
Any troop in the council inviting PP to speak.
Having scouts attend PP events to earn a badge.
Co-sponsor Planned Parenthood event.
Co-sponsor, with PP, a third-party event.
Promotion of a PP event or event with PP participation.
PP execs/board members serving on GS board.
Giving award to PP executive.


What a mess! It really looks like local leadership sets the tone on this issue. 

Meanwhile, the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry (NFCYM), which has been overseeing "Catholic religious recognition programs serving Girl Scout and Camp Fire units" (i.e., badges, pins, etc) since the early 1980's has said:
"Many Catholic Girl Scout leaders are feeling torn between their commitment to Girl Scouting and their commitment to their Catholic teachings because of the real or perceived relationship between GSUSA and organizations like Planned Parenthood. The NFCYM approach to this complex issue has been one of engagement, rather than detachment or withdrawal. NFCYM... needs to stay connected to GSUSA not only because thousands of Catholic girls and Catholic adult leaders are involved in scouting, but because Girl Scouting—like Boy Scouting—provides excellent character development for young people through their programs. NFCYM can only influence secular organizations by staying in relationship with them . . . by being at the table."

Ah, the very question that occurred to me! Withdrawal, boycott, or engagement, dialogue. The Youth Ministers play on the national stage, so their responsibility has a different scope than mine, as a parent dealing with my daughter, one particular potential Girl Scout at the moment.  But the question is the same.

Of course, my husband framed the debate in an entirely different way.  "This is Monkey1 we are dealing with. She may go to four meetings and decide it is boring." 
Like ballet. Like swim team. Like cello lessons.
Although she has begged me in the past, "When am I old enough to be a Girl Scout?" (all three of her girl first-cousins are in or have been in Girl Scouts, and two of her aunts are leaders -- I need to talk to them  next), when I told Monkey1 about a Daisy Girl Scout troop forming for her age with lots of her classmates, she just kinda shrugged.  Girl Scouts may be something that Mom is more excited about than daughter.

Lost and Found

Usually I can reconstruct the reasoning and actions, albeit way after the fact, of Monkey1 and understand why her glasses ended up lost in a new location.

For instance, yesterday morning: after vainly ransacking the house in search of Monkey1's glasses, I stepped out the door to get Monkey2 at least in the car, and there were the glasses, gleaming bright pink and wet with rain on the edge of the sidewalk and lawn by the front step. The day before she had been playing Sleeping Beauty on the front lawn. At the sleeping part she took her glasses off. Then the ice cream truck had arrived, and everything else was forgotten. 

But how did her glasses get in the scissors and crayon drawer? 

Shopping

About a month ago when I filled up the Golf, I had a bit of a panic attack over fuel prices. The car was almost completely empty, and filling it all the way up cost just shy of $50. 

"When we get a bigger car," I thought, "it's only going to get worse!" Minivans, while not a favorite idea for either myself or my husband, do get significantly better gas mileage than the SUVs that would accommodate our long-legged Monkeys. Looking at the price at the pump, I wondered what would make a minivan more attractive to my husband. After all, he drove a VW Minibus for years. That's kinda the same, right? 

Well, except for the coolness factor.

So what if... we painted a minivan with a white top and side posts and a solid color lower body? Make it the coloring of a 'bus?

Ah, the brilliancy of the pregnant mind.

When I pitched the idea to him, he just said "No." (One of my mom friends had at least laughed at me.)

But guess what? VW unveiled a prototype of that very thing this past spring! However, there is no timeline for actual production, and VW has been playing around with different van concepts for several years, without bringing them to market. (I discount the Routan, which is just Chrysler's minivan with a VW badge stuck on the front.)

Anyway, this past weekend we took our first trip out to visit some car dealers. We left the Monkeys with grandparents, which put us under some time constraints, so we just visited two dealerships and looked at and sat in the vehicles to get an idea of what might work for us. 

Honda: Odyssey and Pilot

The salesman started with the Odyssey, and started from the rear of the minivan, opening the rear hatch and demonstrating the fold-down action of the rear seats. (Yawn.) Then he moved to the front, opening the sliding doors with a press of a button on the key.
"Can you open the windows with the key?" I asked suddenly.
He was puzzled. "Does it matter?"
I just waited, but thought, "Yes it matters! My 10-year-old Golf can do it!"
After a moment studying the key, the salesman made the windows go down. 
He knew the interior better, because next he showed us the magical expanding bench seat, split in three sections for separate for fold-up or removal, that was made to accommodate three car seats. Three across right behind the driver! Since two captain's chairs are usually in this location, pushing someone way off into the back, I was hugely impressed by this new option for seating. Another nice feature was the integrated sunshades for those big side windows. No more screaming, "The sun's in my eyes!"
We sat in different locations in the Odyssey, judging its leg room, as well as the driver's seat. 
"Does it have a back-up camera?" I asked, looking at a large blank screen on the dashboard.
"The next model up does, with the leather seats."
I wonder how leather seats would fair against sun-melted crayons.
I exited the Odyssey much more impressed than I ever expected. Its design to seat three car seats in the row behind the driver, rendering it an eight-passenger vehicle, really changed its usefulness in my mind.

With the Pilot, again the salesman started from the rear.
"The trunk space is smaller than the Golf's!" I blurted out in horror. 
I can't remember anything else about the vehicle, though I know we climbed in it and discussed the leg room and various features. No way are we downgrading the cargo area; more kids means more stuff to haul!

My husband and I thanked the salesman, took his card, and headed off discussing the two vehicles. We crossed the Pilot off our list and freely admitted to each other that the Odyssey greatly exceeded our expectations with its expanding bench seat for three. We agreed that it was worth looking at again and taking for a test drive sometime.

Toyota: Highlander, Sienna, and Sequoia

Highlander first, the little SUV that also comes in a Hybrid for better fuel consumption. Too small in the back row. Lots of vehicles come with a third row these days, but the amount of legroom is really cramped. We want a functional third row.

Sienna, minivan, next. Again, the fold-down third row, but this time I was struck by all the nooks and crannies in the floor that said seats fold into... sure to fill up with rocks, crumbs, crayons, and who knows what grossness. Why didn't that occur to me before? Oh vacuum cleaner! 
The seats behind the driver were the two captains chairs, not my preference, and then we discovered that the van only has LATCH (carseat hooks) in three places! Since we currently have two kids in carseat boosters requiring the use of LATCH, seating options are looking pretty limited.
Not to mention that the backup camera screen is smaller than my $20 cell phone. ("It's not that you are a bad driver," my husband told me, "but it's a bigger vehicle. And they just don't build cars to see out the back.")

So the salesman pointed us to the next bigger SUV, the Sequoia. This had better trunk space, more leg room in the third row, more LATCH hooks, a bench in the middle row, and it sat up higher, as I found myself doing the familiar climb-and-hop that I had perfected over the summer with the Suburban. As I inspected the vehicle, I heard the salesman explain to my husband that the difference between the Sequoia and the Sienna was $30,000. "And the gas mileage," my husband pointed out, nodding to the vehicle spec sheet in the window. 13 mpg city driving. Yuck!

Toyota off our list.

As we drove away, seeing a Chevrolet sign, my husband wondered what would happen if he asked asked a salesman if a diesel engine could be dropped into a Suburban.
"They'll laugh at you."
"Probably. But what if they don't?"
"Then they'll say it'll take six months to build."
"What's wrong with that?"
"That's cutting it a bit fine!"
"So?"
I sighed. "I probably won't be driving for the first two weeks after the baby is born anyway."

So first trip out, looked at five sets of wheels, and found one to revisit. Not bad. Looking forward to our next trip out. Not to mention it is such a novelty for us to go anywhere without the Monkeys.

Girl Scouts - Today?

(This is probably the beginning of a series of posts on Girl Scouts. I work slowly these days.)

A week ago now I went to a parent information and organizational meeting for a Daisy Scout troop. One of the first grade moms at Monkey1's school had responded to the bulletin announcement. A troop was in the works! I think eight moms attended, women I knew to varying degrees due to our daughters all being in first grade this year, the kindergarten class last year, and the preschool "Bunny" class the year before that. Only one mother had never been a Girl Scout.

The meeting hostess, a leader for a troop of now sixth graders at our Catholic school, showed us her daughter's Daisy apron, and Brownie and Junior sashes, talked about some of the things they had done to earn badges, and what we needed to do to start a troop.

With one or two meetings a month, Daisy Scouts would introduce the girls to earning "petals" (patches to attach to their uniform) for different activities. Troops are allowed to take a pass on cookie selling the first year of existence. 

 I came home from the one-hour meeting exhausted. This pregnancy I've been climbing into bed between 6:30 and 7:00 (and shouting directions to get the Monkeys through the pajama, teeth brushing, etc. part of bedtime preparation - which is not very effective - culminating in them climbing into bed with me with books to be read), and this meeting had started at 7:00. 

Soon one of my college friends sent me a series of messages, attaching articles titled: "Planned Parenthood distributes sexually explicit brochures at Girl Scout meeting," "Children Leaving Girl Scouts Due to 'Planned Parenthood' Affiliations," and a website called Speak Now Girl Scouts, set up by two teens, former Girl Scouts.

I had a sleepless night. I had heard about a Girl Scouts- Planned Parenthood connection before, as one of my friends had colorfully put it, "Planned Parenthood has their hands down the pants of the Girls Scouts," and I had looked into it briefly at the time, but it was a bit ago and didn't exactly stay uppermost in my mind.

Was this bad enough to keep my six-year-old out of Girl Scouts? Or do we join, and I become a thorn in the side of National?

Wait - when did I become an activist?

I kept searching and reading.
At lot of uproar centered around a closed door meeting (workgroup/panel participants only, one extraneous observer was shooed out) at the U.N. in 2010. Except the last time I heard about this meeting, I'm pretty sure it was dated 2004 or earlier. But I can't find anything but 2010 now, so I'll leave it at that.

I found the following at the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry:

"In the last several days NFCYM has received inquiries about a meeting at the United Nations with Girl Scouts of the USA and whether or not Girl Scouts of the USA distributed offensive material to girls. Our practice, as an organization, is to investigate such matters by going directly to the source involved. Therefore we contacted GSUSA and they have officially offered the statement below. Please share this with those in your diocese who have voiced any concerns with you. This is a good reminder that at times we can be quick to render judgment without fact, that not all information offered on the Internet is accurate, and that our organizational integrity is at stake when we fail to properly investigate allegations.

Statement from Girl Scouts USA
Earlier this month, Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) was honored to attend and participate in the 54th Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations, where girls were encouraged to take action on global issues concerning women and girls. Our participation in that conference was recently the subject of numerous internet stories and blogs that are factually inaccurate and troubling. Here are the facts of that meeting:
*The Girls Only Workshop was jointly hosted by Girl Scouts of the USA, UNICEF’s Working Group on Girls, Girls Learn International and The Grail. The meeting was only open to the girls and participating sponsors.
*Only seven adults were in the room at the time of the meeting, each representing one of the sponsors of the event. No one from Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute was in the room to report on the event.
*30-35 girls from across the world participated in this event. All teenagers.
*The girls received a copy of the only document they were working on titled (“The Girls’ Statement”). No other documents were given to the girls as part of this event.
*The room in question was also used to host other events over the course of the multi-day conference. Prior to our girls entering the room, we did not “sanitize’ the room to ensure that no trash or other items were left behind. We did request that those not associated with the sponsors to leave the room prior to our session.
*The Girl Scouts of the USA was not contacted by Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) regarding its initial story to discuss the facts of this event. Had they applied these basic journalistic standards, perhaps the true details of this event would have been reported.

Our Mission in Girl Scouting is to build girls of courage, confidence and character–who make the world a better place. We continue to be proud of our girls and look forward to showing the world what our girls can do. We thank everyone for their support of Girl Scouting."

Well now. Are the Girl Scouts pulling the wool over the eyes of the Youth Ministers, or is this an urban legend?

Girl Scouts - Memory Lane

The notice in the church bulletin was brief, who to contact if interested in a Daisy Scout troop, and that the Girl Scouts were soon celebrating 100 years.

I did the math, concluding I had been in seventh grade at the 75th anniversary. It had been a bitter cold day outside the state house, with some official remarks and I'm not sure what else, and we went inside afterwards. Someone knew someone who knew someone, and my troop ended up in the governor's office. She was out that day, and we each got a turn to sit in the governor's chair and have our picture taken. (Why hadn't I taken off my ski jacket?) How funny that my grandfather spent twenty-two years in the House as a Town Representative, yet it was the Girl Scouts that got me in the governor's office! Not that I had any ambition in that direction, but how many teenagers can say they sat in their state governor's chair?

I started Girl Scouts as a Brownie, at the tail end of second grade. After a school year commuting to out of town, my mom was looking for ways for me to have friendships close to home. The troop had already completed their community service project, so for me to earn the service patch at the end-of-year ceremony, I (with several grown-ups helping) planted flowers around the Mary statue at our church. Not that the troop had anything to do with our church, but planting flowers was a good Brownie Scout level community service project.

I continued with Girl Scouts through most of grade school, with a few different troop leaders, earning badges for the different activities we did: first aid, Green-Up Day, wild life interest, camping, ... A few summers I did a Girl Scout day camp, and later, a two- week over night camp for several years, swimming, horseback riding, singing, cooking over a camp fire, and grumbling when we got rained on. It was all a lot of fun.

I left Girl Scouts shortly after I flew up to a more senior level, where there were few still involved, and joined a troop with no one I knew. The troop leader planned a weekend camping trip with no provisions or regard to my needing to get church on Sunday. Strike one. The amount of work she expected us to do independently for our badges was beyond what I could manage; all the other girls attended public school, with little or no homework, while I attended Catholic school and had a considerable amount of homework. Unlike my previous troops, no actual badge work was done at meetings, so Strike two. And I didn't hang around for anything else. I moved on to high school and found other activities that fit my life.

Although my departure from Girl Scouts was on a low note, I enjoyed the many many other years and experiences as a Brownie, Cadet, and Junior. So much depended on the troop leader, and the early ones were terrific. Who wouldn't remember first aid after having real medical dummies sprawled on the school library floor? Or creating prize-worthy Fourth of July floats several years in a row? Or collecting  $300 worth of returnable soda cans while filling trash bags and bags and bags of roadside junk on Green Up Day? (A precursor to Earth Day.)

Monkey1 has been watching older cousins in Girl Scouts and asking when she will be old enough. 

100 years, and we could participate.

Bug Scientist

Monkey1 said that Monkey2 caught the escaped grasshopper. 

A minute later, she reported that the grasshopper had bit Monkey2, who showed her finger in evidence: "The orange. He put his poison on me!" 

"I don't think the grasshopper wanted to go back in the cage," I observed.

"That's his spit," corrected Dad.

"Go wash it off," I suggested, "You can have a bandaid if you want." Though clearly there was no blood, which is usually the criteria for a bandaid. (Otherwise we go through far too many bandaids in a day.)

However, my little bug scientist was only temporarily discouraged. The next day at the playground she had a whole pack of children catching crickets and carrying them around in sand buckets. The following day, three grasshoppers ended up in our cricket cage which was already getting crowded with five crickets.

Yes, my four-and-a-half-year-old calls herself a bug scientist. At a family BBQ she found a cicada nymph's discarded exoskeleton and was then directed to one of my husband's cousins, an entomologist at the University of North Carolina. They had a lengthy conversation, and she came home with a string of big words and a plastic cup full of the exoskeletons. 

The next evening my husband found a live cicada nymph on our sidewalk, put it in Monkey2's bug box, and by the next morning, it had climbed out of its skin and now looked like a giant fly. She was enthralled. 

Ever since, a terrorized scream of "A bug!" from Monkey1 has Monkey2 charging to the scene proclaiming, "Out of the way! I'm a bug scientist - I'll pick it up!"

The Missing Months

While I was MIA, on this blog I've missed writing about
my tenth anniversary of leaving Vermont,
Vacation Bible School, with both Monkeys participating and me leading the preschooler craft activity,
being so sick that I'd take a rest on the sofa and wake up to find the Monkeys had given each other and me a pedicure, or painted the front doorstep purple, or made a snack of pretzels, yogurt, and jam and then abandoned it in favor of marshmallows and chocolate chips,
a family beach vacation, with 30 members of my husband's family,
an earthquake,
my addiction to the 39 Clues series,
Monkey1's obsession with Harry Potter,
Monkey2's cicadas, grasshoppers, and crickets,
the ins and outs of getting a city building permit,
Monkey1 starting first grade,
Monkey2 starting a second year of preschool and having a teacher her sister had two years ago,
major car trouble the second week of school,
the ten year anniversary of September 11th,
grappling with the concept of buying Halloween costumes because I'm still not well to sit at my sewing machine,
...
It all lands me here. 17 weeks pregnant, tired, pretty much over the puking several times a day, craving Popeye's chicken, biscuits, and coleslaw OR iHop's crepes stuffed with omelets. Knowing our lives will change all over again when we welcome a Monkey3, probably the week of Saint Patrick's Day, when we already have three out of four birthdays, mere weeks before my husband and I mark 10 years of marriage.

All Creatures Great and Small

The safety barricades blocked off half the school parking lot. There were dogs on leashes everywhere. And a hedgehog in cage, a hamster hiding under his bedding, two frogs in small aquariums, two gerbils, a bird in a cage, ... it was the Feast of St. Francis and the annual blessing of the pets. 

Monkey2 had her two crickets and grasshopper in their box, and she had brought Monkey1's Zuzu pet. I think Monkey1 was pleased to have her battery-operated hamster. She was not shy about showing it to classmates and teachers, one of whom nicely said it was the best behaved of all the pets there.

The cricket and grasshopper cage suffered such earthquakes in the car ride and being carried about in the school yard that Monkey2 decided to clean it out upon our return home. During the grasshopper's transfer to another bug box, he made successful a bid for freedom. Monkey2 was upset. I consoled her that St. Francis would watch over him. The crickets were much more docile, and I think they are happier without the grasshopper in their cage. Certainly they spend less time hiding under their egg carton houses.

By evening, the Monkeys had captured a half-dozen slugs in a bowl.

Apparently our postage-stamp-sized backyard contains plenty of pets.

Carrots

My husband sent the Monkeys outside before breakfast to check on the carrots. They came back with one the size of my little finger and several smaller ones. Evidently we should have been watering them more. However, they tasted DELICIOUS!

This prompted Monkey2 to propose a Carrot Festival when they are big enough. There will be carrot cupcakes, carrot cake, carrot pancakes...
"Carrot soup," added Monkey1.
"...and carrot ice cream," finished Monkey2.

Reading Aloud

The day after the Fourth of July I started reading the pile of kids' books we bought at the library sale before the parade. $4.50 plus a 50 cent donation, so no one had to worry about exact change, yielded nine Magic Tree House books, two Junie B. Jones books, a talking Barbie dictionary that turned out to have a loose connection, and one Abby Cadabby book. 

Monkey2 really seemed to enjoy listening to Junie B. Jones, a series about a kindergartener. In one book her baby brother was born, and when grandma came home from the hospital reporting that he was a cute little monkey, Junie took this literally and proudly reported to her class that her baby brother was a baby monkey. Okay, cute. BUT heavens is it ungrammatical! 

The book is written approximately as a kindergartener would talk, and while this creates a very convincing character, it is impossible for me to read aloud. I keep correcting the grammar as I go. Not in my head, mind you, but aloud, on the fly, as I read this book aloud for the first time. 

Junie B., you are not coming home with us. Dr. Seuss' fragments are one thing, but I simply can't stand this. Correct language usage comes from hearing and reading it used properly. 

Summer Fling

Day 1
This year on vacation we got a deal on an eight person SUV - hey we could take our family and my sister's family on field trips! It turned out to be a black, tinted-windows, Suburban. Seriously? It looked like the Secret Service lost one of their presidential vehicles. 

When we opened the trunk space to stow our bags, the Monkeys decided to test this entrance, flinging themselves over the backseat and, like any kid on a school bus, claiming the last row. I opted to climb through from the passenger doors to put in the carseats, and I simply could not believe how easy it was, and how much room I had to maneuver. Remember, I'm used to installing carseats in a Golf!

Way up front, it took five minutes to figure out all the seat adjustment buttons on the lovely black leather seats. And I had so much leg room! No kneecap bruising against the glove box in this vehicle.  

Day 3
The Monkeys have fevers of 100 to 102, Monkey2 since about 3 a.m. the day we left home. So the third day of this and our vacation we took them to a walk-in clinic. Monkey2 perked up and was singing little songs the whole time, while Monkey1 fell asleep on my lap waiting for the strep test results to come back. No strep, no ear infection, just fevers, minor sore throats, and in Monkey1's case, throwing up on Mom in the middle of the night. The doctor told me "Popsicles and Tylenol," while according to Monkey2, her prescription was "Popsicles and Jello."

Since grandma does not, strangely enough, keep Popsicles or Jello in her house, I got to drive the Suburban to the grocery store.

It needs a back up camera.
Being so high up is amazing.
It handles great, the turns, the acceleration, the braking, and it is really kind of fun to drive.
To park the beast, I chose a spot far away from the store and other vehicles and did the easy pull through one spot into the next one maneuver. I did get between the parking lines on either side of the vehicle, but not sure where the front end ended, I landed with an empty four feet of space in front of the vehicle, with the back end hanging a corresponding four feet into the parking space behind. The tires were all in one parking space at least!

Day 8
Sign of True Love: my husband backed the Suburban into an airport parking spot, so I could pull out going forward. He left us today, and we'll stay another week. 

Day 9
I got to try the Suburban on dirt roads. A family gathering way up in the hills gave me a road test of hairpin turns, speed limits that would suddenly fluctuate from 50 mph down to 25 mph through the center of tiny towns, up and down steep inclines, on wet soft gravel, and no I did not have to use four-wheel drive.
Dude! It's a truck! It was awesome! 
I couldn't help noticing that almost all the other vehicles at my uncle's house were Subaru cars. Sigh - now I'm the city girl that uses a truck on a glorified driveways.

Day 13
I took the Monkeys to outdoor church today, Saint Ann's Shrine up in the islands. There's a roof for shade but no walls.

The drive up to nearly the Canadian border was fine, but I felt like a complete klutz trying to park the Suburban in the grassy make-your-own-parking-spot area. Was it better or worse that the vehicle had local license plates?

Day 15
"Good-bye truck," I said fondly.
"It's not a truck," said Monkey1. 

Until this vacation I would have agreed with her. A truck has utility, "an eight foot bed that never needs to made," says a country singer.

But eight-person people hauler that it is, the Suburban drives like a truck. And I enjoyed it. On vacation, where I was mostly driving it on wide roads in rural areas, I could enjoy its power. I know this is the wrong vehicle for my normal life, congested highways, narrow lanes due to road construction, and parallel parking this in Old Town? Forget it! Our Golf is the best utility vehicle for us where we live. 

Summer Reading

We signed up for the library's summer reading program. As the children's librarian gave Monkey1 the form for recording books, the librarian said, "And if you read, or have read to you, ten books by the end of the summer, you will get a little prize."

I nearly choked. Ten books - we read that in a week! I managed to nod solemnly without uttering a word.

Later, reading the "more about" sheet for the summer reading program, I noticed that the program ends on August 3. Since when is that the end of the summer? No wonder the goal is so modest.

By the end of the day, Monkey2 had two books on her list, and Monkey1 was part-way through a Dr. Seuss and a DK Star Wars book. I wonder if books on tape from the library count; we're on our third time listening to "The Indian in the Cupboard."

Four Letter Words

I was attempting to comb Monkey2's hair at 7:20 in an effort to get to the 7:30 a.m. Mass because the later ones have the bell choir during the Easter season, subtracting three pews from general use and adding fifteen to twenty minutes to the Monkeys' weekly be-quiet endurance test.

My voice hit the necessary panic note summoning my husband to examine Monkey2's head, pale blonde with a dark bug stuck in her head. A tick. Now there's a four-letter word of worry. He carefully removed it with tweezers, getting the head and pinchers out. "Not a deer tick," he announced, and burned the tick in the gas flame of our range. But that was not all in her hair... "What is that?" "A leg?" "No, these specs." "Dried blood? Did she bump her head?"

We were only five minutes late for church.

At home again, I kept the Monkeys busy with books so my husband could do some research, and he came back with another four-letter word: lice.

Stripped down both Monkeys and put them in the bathtub, doused their heads with olive oil, and let them play while we assessed the cleaning needs for the entire house! Where had her head touched? Lice crawl, not jump, so we did not immediately think of torching the house. We started with their bedroom, stripping the beds, taking down the curtains, separating toys into washable and needing quarantine, taking all the clothes out of the closet (because they use the closet as a clubhouse and their heads get all in the clothes), and then we started moving furniture and found yet another four-letter bane of sanity: mice. By their leavings, that is, not a nest!

All Monkey1's comments previously dismissed, where noises were just the neighbors and monsters meant she needed to turn on the night light, came back to me. Some time ago I had ripped up the carpet in the Monkey's bedroom, revealing hardwood floor and leaving a gap between the floor and the molding that had previously come flush down to the carpet. Since I had heard an odd scrabbling in the wall just recently, we guessed that mice were in the walls and coming out to dance in the Monkeys' room at night!

My husband promptly went to Home Depot, got the miter saw he had been thinking about, 40 feet of wood trim, and a box of nails, and covered the gap all the way around the room. I emptied closets, stripped beds, vacuumed, did laundry, and quarantined all toys with fur, hair, or cloth bodies into air-tight bags for the next month. Lice eggs hatch in 7 to 10 days, and adult lice can live without a host for up to 10 days. I have to treat the Monkeys' heads with olive oil every other day for ten days, wash the bed sheets every other day, and vacuum every day.

At the end of the first day I felt like I had been on the Stairmaster all day. At the end of the second day I felt like I had done a Stairmaster marathon. At the end of the third day I was still struggling to get all the fabric in the house washed: clothes, towels, sheets, even things that had been drawers or closets because of the Monkeys' tendency to make forts or tents in all sorts of places with whatever materials are available. At the end of the forth day, I'm contemplating buying a vacuum cleaner for every floor so I don't have to carry it upstairs downstairs and into the basement. I also noticed the Monkeys' do not need overflowing T-shirt drawers, and I wished for not only a laundry chute, but a clothes folder, elevator, or to live among natives who wear only loin clothes and check each other for nits every afternoon.

It has been going around at school. I had the Monkeys' checked by the school nurse on day two, she noted them clean of lice, and sent to their classrooms (where Monkey2 promptly announced "No one touch my head! I had a bug!") But, the nurse told me, keep checking them, and keep vacuuming and washing things. It's that one missed egg that can cause it all to come back again.



Tick, tock,
lice come
on mice,
and my house is SO clean now!

Kitchen News

The pork dishes, from the same coupon that brought the uninspiring steak and chicken dishes into my kitchen, were much better. I also never cook pork, so since I did not burn it or undercook it, those meals tasted great!

The scones, a extra freebie, were okay. I'm not much on scones. My apologies to my great-grandmother, who earned the eternal scorn of all the women in the family she married into on accounts of being an immigrant, Irish, Catholic, and not making biscuits properly! Because any Irish girl doesn't make biscuits, she makes scones!

Over a month ago I tried a recipe for cream cheese pound cake. (Wait - "recipe" is really spelled like that? Re-ci-pe... the "e" at the end says its name instead of being silent? Here I was struggling with cei or cie and finally my spellcheck came up with this, which I then had to look up in a proper dictionary because I just couldn't believe it! How did I not know how to spell this word? Oh... I read a lot of books as a child, but scorned the cookbooks.) So, back to the cream cheese pound cake: I baked it in my favorite pan, a bee hive shape, which simply did not work for this recipe. I kept checking on it, but it would not even come close to cooking in the center of the pan, while the edges curled up and burned, badly. The cake was simply too moist for that pan shape. I actually had to throw out the cake! It was only a test bake, and then life intervened, and the bake sale I had intended to donate a cake to had to do without me. However, in time for Mother's Day, a friend gave me a awesome Nordic Ware bundt pan, and this proved perfect for my second try at the cream cheese pound cake. Plus, since the pan came in its manufacturer's box, I had the perfect sized cake carrying box for it!

And what possessed me to make shortbread?!
Monkey1 wanted to try out the Christmas rolling pin. For some reason it was in my head that shortbread was the cookie dough used. I was surprised at the easy ingredients: flour, sugar, butter. No chilling in the fridge either, which often happens when using a rolling pin. We mixed up the dough and patted it out and gave the rolling pin a once-over-the-dough, leaving a base relief of strange shapes on the top of the dough, and popped it in the oven. Came out as short bread should, very crumbly. Monkey1 said it didn't taste very good. I should have stuck with my gingerbread recipe that uses honey instead of molasses because I know that would work with a rolling pin!

Disappointing Dishes

When a friend posted a 50% off coupon to a meal prep business I had bought some meals from during early Monkey2 pregnancy, I jumped for it. This time not only did I chose from their delicious menu, there were some extra sides thrown in, and delivery to my door! I just unpacked the box, confiscated the crumbly packing material the Monkeys, and put everything in the freezer.

The meals were all assembled in ziplock bags, frozen, ready anytime I wanted to unthaw and cook them up. The experience several years ago was so good I got into making my own freezer ready assembled meals for awhile.

First meal: marinated steak. It was huge! It filled my family sized Foreman Grill. When I checked on the steak, to my dismay I discovered after a year and a half of use, this grill has developed a cold spot on one side. Part of the steak was cooking merrily along, while the other part was as pink as when I plunked it onto the grill! So after cutting, rotating, and otherwise working around the nonworking part of kitchen equipment, I had two steaks done to family specs: done for the kids, less done for my husband and myself. The potato fries, sliced in large thin coins, cooked in the oven in about eight minutes. The fries were great! The seasoning was delicious, so whether crispy or slightly wiggly (since some slices lay on top of each other during cooking), they were all eaten up. The steak however was disappointing. The tough veins of fat ran through it parallel to the plate, so they were in every bite, plus I found the marinade did nothing particular to the meat. Definitely sticking to the grass-fed and my own marinade, found in the starter recipes that came with a little outdoor Weber grill purchased some years ago.

Meal two: cheddar cheese chicken fingers. Chicken, cut in tenders, and breaded in ... cheez-its crackers? All I could taste were chemicals! The Monkeys were not crazy about them either. From now on, I'm so sticking with a recipe out of Real Simple magazine where I bread the chicken in multigrain crackers and sharp cheese.

I have two more meals, which I'm scheduling this week, and I hope they go a little better. Or maybe not, because I do want the Monkeys' preferring Mom's cooking more than a franchise assembled meal.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

To be honest, I did pause while digging through my T-shirt drawer this morning. Martini T? Too flip. Blue shirt? Not long enough in the torso. Another color too drab. And so I was left with the green "Happy Saint Patrick's Day" spelled out in rhinestones. Would anyone bother to notice? A T-shirt is just a shirt, and the letters were small. I wear the black Christmasy reindeer in sparkles fairly often and no one seems to notice, so Irish green it was.

A Grandma, the sitter for one of Monkey1's classmates, said something about my shirt.
"It's a $7 shirt," I shrugged, "I want to get my money's worth out of it."

Then later, Monkey1's swimming coach said something about my shirt being two months late.
"I'm a St. Patrick's baby," I retorted, "I can wear it whenever I want!"
Her face lit up, "I am too! The day after!"

Now really, another March! Obviously there's something about June for starting babies.

The Reality of Books

This morning, my two Monkeys and two friends were all squished together in the back bench row of a minivan, sharing back and forth copies of the Magic Tree House books. These feature a brother and sister, ages 8 and 7 I think, who time-travel with books and a magical tree house. Our family has been listening to the books on CD, while my friend has been reading them to her children.

My friend and I were having a conversation when a rising ruckus in the backseat finally caused her to intervene: several children were upset because they were wishing on the books, just as the books' characters would do, but they were not going anywhere!

Like Storm Troopers

Monkey1 is almost a first grader. I witnessed a shift today.

We got to school 15 minutes early, on purpose in order to search the playground for a book she left there yesterday. She found it right where she left it, in a bush, and then we planted ourselves in the garden space with benches near the church doors, halfway up the sidewalk to the gym entrance to the school. Actually, I parked myself on a bench and Monkey1 and Monkey2 jumped around on the flagstone path, Monkey1 practicing her counting by tens, fives, and twos. A classmate joined her, under the full-suited eye of a father about to head to work. When the bell rang, opening the school doors, the other kindergartner bid a cheerful good-bye shout to his father. Monkey1 told me that I didn't have to walk with her, that she was going with...

"We're going to sneak," he told her, "like storm troopers" (not the storm troopers I grew up with, who were the bad guys, but the earlier ones, who have their own cartoon shows these days) "through the church -- it's faster!"

In amusement I followed well behind as they tip-toed through the gathering space, out to the covered walkway, to the school front doors by the office. Monkey1's classmate had to ring for the door to be unlocked, he was so short that the secretary did not see him go by the window, and then they shot in through the doors, after a brief struggle to yank them open.

No kiss, no good-bye, as I watched her with pride. My kindergartner can almost walk into school on her own.

March Close-Out

March Madness at our house:

Third anniversary of moving into our house, marked by taking pictures of every room and the yard, ideally with the Monkeys scampering in and out of the shots, tracking the changes to our abode in the past year.

Monkey2 turned 4.

Husband turned something.

I turned something, and really I don't know what. Whenever anyone asks my age, I literally have to do the math. If it's a friend, who then sees me counting on my fingers, the question is dismissed. If it is a doctor's office asking, I actually have to figure it out.

Irish Homecoming Feast: our annual St. Patrick's Day party, and family lump birthday party. Cooked four crock pots of corned beef this year, and we had barely enough leftovers for one sandwich. The Guinness corned beef (3 cans of beer instead of water) was the hands-down favorite.

***

Apparently my banana bread is prize-worthy. My husband's goddaughter needed a banana bread recipe for a contest at work, so I wrote up my Tuesday banana bread directions (which I know by heart), and it took second place.

***

Woke up to a light snow a week after my birthday. "MY BIRTHDAY STORM!" I said gleefully. The Monkeys took up the chant, countered by my husband grumbling that I'm not allowed to have a birthday storm now that I don't live in Vermont. Fortunately snow is magical to my Monkeys, so they prefer to believe that Mom can get a snow storm for a birthday present.

My Baby is Four

Today Monkey2 is four. My baby is four years old.

She opened all her presents before breakfast, the necklace her sister had made her, the bike bell, the me & dolly stripped zebra dress I made, the curved travel pillow shaped like a cat that I made, and a box of other clothing, second-hands that I've been saving.

I think Monkey1 felt a bit left out. Her birthday is next month, and while getting dressed for school she changed the calendar to April.

Monkey2 had school for the morning, and we brought a box of cookies for the class that we had made yesterday. I used the chocolate chip cookie recipe, without the chocolate chips. I squirted green frosting in the shape of a cross on the top of each cookie, and Monkey2 added a mini-marshmallow in the center.

After school, lunch at home, we went back to school/church for her violin lesson. This was her third lesson. The teacher added more little pieces of yellow tape to the fingerboard to show where the fingers hold down the strings. At the end of the lesson, Monkey2 proudly told her teacher that her birthday was TODAY. So her teacher pulled out her own violin and played "Happy Birthday." Monkey2 was so mesmerized, intently watching the fingers on the large violin, that she was hardly paying attention to the song.

Then, rather than go home and come back again for Monkey1's school pick-up, I had tossed Monkey2's bike and new bell in the car. We took a little walk/ride around the block, and then sat down on the benches outside church with a coloring book until the end of day bell rang.

Supper was Monkey2's favorite: Chinese take-out. The paternal grandparents came with gifts too. More costume changes as she tried on all the cute spring fashions and cuddled the stuffed animal dogs. (She dearly wants a real one.) With much huffing and puffing, she blew out the four candles on her shamrock shaped cake, her requested flavor: carrot cake with green frosting.

New Hello Kitty nightgown for bedtime, a chapter of The BFG, and tuck-in and prayers. Same as for the past two years, both Monkeys prayed in hopes of future siblings.

My baby is four. I guess that means she's not a "baby" anymore. She's certainly too heavy when she tries to sleep though older sister's school pick-up and I try to carry her on my shoulder.

Birthday Week Begins

Monkey2, my husband, and I have birthdays all in a row around and including St. Patrick's Day. Yes, that made quite a stir in the maternity ward when Monkey2 was born.

Monkey2 got a jump on the festivities with her birthday party today, five days early, because today was a teachers' in-service day. Her school friends were looking for something to do anyway! I did lay down the rule "the number you turn is the number of friends you invite" but we had to cheat a little and not count some siblings. I had nine children in the house, ages 1 to 6! Fortunately I had three mommies there too.

A Friday in Lent party... so peanut butter and jelly, pizza with tomato sauce and cheese, and pizza with cheese without sauce.

Then we did an egg hunt. I divided the children into kindergartners (Monkey1 and two others) and preschoolers (Monkey2 and her friends). I gave each group a box of plastic eggs, sent the older ones upstairs to hide their eggs and kept the preschoolers on the main level to hide theirs. Then the groups swapped locations in order to find the eggs. This went over really well, especially since the treasure inside the eggs were pennies; the Monkeys had stuffed eggs this morning, approximately two cents per egg. Not all the eggs were found, so we have more treasure hunting to do later.

Then, the pinata, which Monkey2 and I have been working on for two weeks with layers of paper mache. Yesterday we spray painted it, in the rain, and then hung it in the shed to dry. This morning we filled it with Squinkies, tiny rubber animals or people, and packets of Trader Joe's Fruity Flakes. The first to whack at the pinata was the birthday girl, and then everyone in birthday order, oldest last. Everyone got two turns, with the oldest six-year-old proudly smashing it open. Finally, the birthday cake, which was chocolate cupcakes in ice cream cones. Yesterday Monkey2 helped me decorate them with blue frosting, gummy bears and gummy penguins and drink umbrellas.

An hour party - whew!

Ashes, Ashes

A week prior to Lent, Monkey1 raised an outcry against receiving ashes. Last year at preschool the parish priest had spoken to the children and distributed ashes. Monkey1 was extremely upset over this at the time, and the prospect of this happening all over again was worth trying to be sick and stay home. Finally though she asked me to sit in the back of church, and without a murmur she marched down the sidewalk to the school entrance that day. Or was that the day she walked next to a friend, leaving me way behind, and Monkey2 frantically shouting and blowing kisses to her sister's back?

Monkey2 however had other ideas than going to school. So I simply took her to Ash Wednesday Mass with me, and unwisely happened to sit right in front of a row of fifth grade girls who gushed over Monkey2 with the looped blonde braids. She cuted up for them too, except whenever we stood up, she firmly stuck both hands over her forehead to ward off any ashes.

Monkey1 received her ashes without protest, clutching on to her sixth grade buddy's arm to dear life, and he seemed encouraging and congratulatory when it was all over. Monkey2 hid behind me, hands over her forehead.

After Mass I turned Monkey2 over to the school office, and the secretary marched her off to class. When I returned two hours later, Monkey2 proudly told me at pick-up that the priest had come to the preschool and given everyone ashes, even her! I could not see a smudge on her forehead (whereas some of the other children had evident ash remaining), which she explained with "mine turned white."

Pink Legos

Today was the rainy afternoon I introduced Legos.

Of course my Monkeys have seen Legos before; two Christmases ago one relative gave them a box of Legos. I was quietly furious because Monkey1 was 3, Monkey2 was 1, and the box clearly said "Ages 4+." Like I needed more choking hazards and hard plastic cubes to step on! In the melee of Christmas gifts it quietly disappeared.

However two months ago the Monkeys went to a birthday party, and in each goodie bag was a small Lego airplane, about 20 pieces with assembly instructions. These were fascinating to my girls, now ages nearly 6 and nearly 4. So the next time I was in Target childless -- really? how did that happen? -- I visited the toy section and found a pink starter bin of 400 pieces. Since the set included only one minifigure, I picked up another one to add to the box. It has been hidden in the basement until this afternoon when Monkey1 said, "Dad, can you turn on the TV?" Mom said, "I've got something else... close your eyes!"

I spread a white sheet out on the floor, to better see and keep contained all the little pieces, and we dumped open the bin (which is in the shape of a Lego). A lot of the pieces were pink bricks, plus the usual colors, and specialty shapes such a door, windows, car wheels, steering wheel, windshield, and pieces to make flowers. The idea booklet got us started, with a pink car and then a pink house. But by supper time we had set up a town of houses and odd shapes statues, using every single Lego piece!

Two years ago, when I had two pre-preschoolers, how could I imagine that this day would come? Let the building begin!

Starting the Green Weeks

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Yes, it is March 5 and Happy St. Patrick's Day. In our fair city, the local Irish organizer prides himself on stepping off the first in the nation St. Patrick's Day Parade each year, hence the early celebration. Monkey2, an honorary leprechaun by the proximity of her birthday, dressed herself in her favorite shamrock dress and matching hat. I begged Monkey1 to wear a new headband that had a little green in it, while I had a green T-shirt. I coached the Monkeys on their ancestral rights to the day: great-great-grandmother O'Sullivan from Dingle Bay who married a Vermont farmer, and great-great-great-grandfather Farrell who got some land on the Homestead Act and settled in Nebraska. As to be expected, they were not terribly impressed. All those "greats" make those people a long long time ago...

All the way to the parade the Monkeys were talking about another "long long ago." Last year the 501st Legion was in the St. Patrick's Day Parade. I think that any group that puts up the money can participate, but I was not expecting Darth Vader and Stormtroopers marching down the street! Historical reenactors bring every century to life, and so, there are also people who do the science fiction version of it. And this is how a 5 and 3 year-old remember the St. Patrick's Day Parade.

The Irish Schools of Dance were out full force, all the girls with their bouncy curls and ornate dresses. The firemen brigades of bagpipes and drums blared away. There were some Celtic Sports teams of several ages, and a Circus School on unicycles. Several groups of dogs in costume shuffled along, as well as a pack of Irish Wolf Hounds. An Irish handyman drove a enormous truck. There were several groups that had obviously pasted on a bit of green for the occasion, and some are green but not Irish -- such as the green parrot mascot for a local bank. The city policemen on their motorcycles, weaving in patterns on the street, came near the end. Monkey1 screamed, jumped, and covered her ears, eliciting a smile from the youngest officer in the group, but the rest had steel set faces.

After the parade was done, and the Monkeys had some Ben & Jerry's ice cream, I asked them what their favorite part of the parade was. Monkey2 declared that the chocolate coin (from a restaurant float) was her favorite. Monkey1 decided on Darth Vader, who once again, as she says, "had crashed into the parade."

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

postscript to Tuesday

I held a two-and-a-half-month-old baby today. A mother had to deal with a toddler and tossed me the baby. I can't remember my children ever being so small. (They did start out bigger than most, at 9 1/2 and 9 3/4 pounds.) This little guy just gazed at me, wide-eyed and amazed, randomly twitching. I couldn't remember that either. Then Monkey2 noticed I had a baby on my lap, and she crowded in, stroking his head, playing with his hands, taking off his socks and counting his toes... oh yes, THIS I remember.

Tuesday

7:48 a.m. Took Monkey1 to school.

8:02 a.m. Took Monkey2 home.

9:30 a.m. Took Monkey2 and banana bread to mother's rosary & playgroup, next to the school.

11:45 a.m. Took Monkey2 and empty banana bread pan home.

1:20 p.m. Took Monkey2 and violin to first lesson, in the school music room.

2:17 p.m. Took Monkey2 and violin to violin shop for a shoulder rest.

3:00 p.m. Took Monkey2, violin, shoulder pad, and case ID tag back to school to pick up Monkey1.

4:00 p.m. Took Monkey1, Monkey2, and violin home.

No wonder my car has passed one hundred thousand miles.

God is my Garmin

I've heard the phrase "God is my co-pilot." I know it is the name of a book but I've never read it. I've also heard that God ought to be the pilot, not the co-pilot, of our lives. However, since I don't have a clear idea of what a pilot does as compared to a co-pilot, the whole comparison never struck a chord with me. Not to mention, just the idea of an empty seat guiding an airplane is unnerving.

Which I think is part of the point -- that I am not in charge, not in complete utter absolute control of my life and where and how it goes -- but an empty seat is an empty seat whether there's an invisible being there or not.

However, I have recently stumbled upon the technological comparison for our times (plus it is alliterative, which just gives it extra pizazz): God is my Garmin.

The Garmin is an electronic navigation device. It sticks up on the windshield or the dashboard of a car, and it shows and tells the driver how to get from point A to point B, or A, B, C, and D if that's how many stops one needs to make. The screen shows a map of the streets with a little car icon traveling along a highlighted route while a voice will periodically note turns needed. The really nice part about this device is that it will "re-calculate" the route if a turn is missed. This is really useful when road construction can close highway exits and detour signs are scant.

Put in a destination, and follow the directions. Simple! I've learned some nice shortcuts through neighborhoods, as well as some ludicrous ones. Still, on occasion I come out the other side and find that the Garmin just guided me around a major traffic snarl. (Also one of its features.) However, it does not seem to avoid construction projects or general road work, in which case I veer off the Garmin's mapped out route, making it recalculate the route. Sometimes it will plead with me, "Turn right at [name of street] ... Re-calculating... Turn right at [next name of street]... Make a U-turn when able..." Sometimes it will give up and say, "Proceed to highlighted route" without telling me how to get there.

So how does God fit in with this? It takes some trust to follow the computer. It will get me there, though perhaps not by the way I'd immediately think of taking. I do have to deal with the details, like steering the car, watching the other cars on the road, and being alert to road conditions and temporary road changes not yet in its memory. Yet when I get to my destination, I can look at the trip log, which leaves little tire marks on the computer map, and I understand the turns that did not necessarily make sense at the time. So too with God in my life. So too with God.

Happy Birthday George

Happy Birthday George Washington! (He's 279 years old.)

His "home town" celebrates with a parade, and the Monkeys were delighted to wave at George and Martha Washington in their carriage, Revolutionary reenactors marching just ahead of them. There were also Shriners aplenty in their red velvet fez hats and little racing cars. To our backs, on the hill, stood the George Washington Masonic Memorial, built in the 1920s "to honor and perpetuate the memory, character and virtues of the man who best exemplifies what Freemasons are and ought to be, Brother George Washington" according to the Monument information page.

Then more reenactors marching, some Revolutionary War, and some Civil War, including "Sons of Confederate Soldiers" which still shocks this Northerner. But the South lost, I always marvel, The war was about slavery, why is there such pride about this? However, the sense of The South runs much deeper, as one of my friends recently discovered with her five-year-old. When they were talking about the Civil War, her son wanted to know "which side" they were on. His mother hedged, saying that the Civil War was over a long time ago, there weren't "sides" any more. However, when further pressed, she admitted that they live, and her son was born in, a Southern state, which had been part of the Confederacy. To her surprise and dismay -- she is from Ohio, the North -- he promptly and adamantly sided with the South.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, so historical sites are promoting themselves a good deal more than usual. I'm curious if the "sides" issue will come up in our house, since of the four of us, two were born in the North, one in the South, and one in a border state which sent men to both armies. It may not, since princesses get rather more time than soldiers in our house. However, a lady in a hoop skirt looks a great deal like a princess...

What would a parade be without politicians? George Washington was walking with one party candidate, though I forget which one, followed by legions of boy scouts and girl scouts, seemingly a troop from every church in the city. The marching bands were great; Monkey2 had been sitting on dad's shoulders, but after being beaten by flailing limbs, perfectly in time with the music, he put her down.

And once again, my husband and I had to laugh that the mounted horses were immediately followed by two city street vacuum trucks, to keep the parade route tidy.

This was a nice "little" parade, and we're looking forward to St. Patrick's Day.